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Eddie the Eagle

"'Eddie the Eagle,' the movie, is a lovely little surprise, a feel-good flick with an unusual underdog story deftly told by director Dexter Fletcher, a charming hero played by an unrecognizable Taron Egerton and some toe-tingling views of the perilous jumps that he conquers." - Kate Taylor, Globe & Mail

"They say that God loves a trier. If that’s true then Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards will be guaranteed a seat at Heaven’s top table when he eventually skids off his mortal coil. At the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, Edwards became the first person ever to represent Great Britain in ski jumping. That’s not to say he was actually any good at it. It’s no spoiler to say he was not victorious. Far from it. Yet, encapsulating the typical British approach to sport, Edwards charged on optimistically against all likelihood of victory and came home a hero, no medals weighing him down as he was hoisted on the nation’s collective shoulder.

"Dexter Fletcher has turned Edwards’ story into a comedy of soaring delights, a sports movie where it’s genuinely the taking part that counts. Through 'Wild Bill' and 'Sunshine On Leith', Fletcher has shown himself a director who likes to hope for a happy ending, whatever gloom might block it from view, which makes him the ideal match for this material. There is an easier film that could have been made here, one that played Edwards’ failures for laughs. He is inherently easy to mock, watching from behind bottle-thick glasses as everyone in his field sails beyond his abilities. Yet Edwards is very rarely the butt of the joke, at least for the audience. He’s treated as a hero, and not because he might win (because he won’t), but because he achieves his dreams by his own hard work.

"Taron Egerton is charm personified as Eddie. He doesn’t caricature his eccentricities and keeps a glint of optimism even as the obstacles look insurmountable. Hugh Jackman makes a great foil, playing about a seven on his scale of gruff irritation, if we’re taking Wolverine as a ten. They sell their mission and their friendship so hard that by the time it comes to Eddie’s big moment, teetering at the top of a potential fatal drop, you’re willing him, internally screaming him, to victory even though you know there’s no chance. As a man he may never have made the podium, but as a movie 'Eddie The Eagle' flies." - The Guardian